President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to once again withdraw the US from the landmark Paris climate agreement. The pact aims to limit long-term global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Trump's action, hours after he was sworn in to a second term, echoed his directive in 2017, when he announced that the US would abandon the global Paris accord.
The pact is aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or, failing that, keeping temperatures at least well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Trump also signed a letter to the United Nations indicating his intention to withdraw from the 2015 agreement, also known as Cop21, which allows nations to provide targets to cut their own emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Those targets are supposed to become more stringent over time, with countries facing a February 2025 deadline for new individual plans.
According to Trump, the Paris accord is among a number of international agreements that don't reflect US values and "steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people."
Instead of joining a global agreement, "the United States’ successful track record of advancing both economic and environmental objectives should be a model for other countries,'' Trump said.
Global temperatures exceeded 1.5C warming limit in 2024
The outgoing Biden administration last month offered a plan to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent by 2035.
Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris accord, told Associated Press that the planned US withdrawal was unfortunate but said action to slow climate change "is stronger than any single country’s politics and policies."
Momentum
The global context for Trump's action is "very different to 2017,'' Tubiana said Monday, adding that "there is unstoppable economic momentum behind the global transition, which the US has gained from and led but now risks forfeiting."
The International Energy Agency expects the global market for key clean energy technologies to triple to more than $2 trillion (€1.9 trillion) by 2035, she said.
"The impacts of the climate crisis are also worsening. The terrible wildfires in Los Angeles are the latest reminder that Americans, like everyone else, are affected by worsening climate change," Tubiana said.
The world is now long-term 1.3 degrees Celsius above mid-1800s temperatures. Most but not all climate monitoring agencies said global temperatures last year passed the warming mark of 1.5 degrees Celsius and all said it was the warmest year on record.
Trump’s return sharpens Macron’s bid for a stronger, united Europe
The US – the second biggest annual carbon polluting country behind China – put 4.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the air in 2023, down 11 percent from a decade earlier, according to the scientists who track emissions for the Global Carbon Project.
But carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere for centuries, so the United States has put more of the heat-trapping gas that is now in the air than any other nation.
The US is responsible for nearly 22 percent of the carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere since 1950, according to Global Carbon Project.
(with newswires)
